Previous research has shown an increased student interest and enhanced learning when the school science content is related to other familiar contexts. This is particularly evident in intervention studies, which aim to integrate the school science content with students’ everyday life. In this article, we analyse how teachers, in authentic situations, relate science content presented in lesson introductions to other contexts such as everyday life or other school subjects. The data consists of observations of lesson introductions in grade nine, from six different schools, in all eight hours of video recordings. The results point to that teachers adopt a variety of ways in order to integrate the science content to other contexts, such as relating to students’ everyday life, to different language perspectives or to other school subjects and thereby initiate hybrid contexts. However, the results indicate that the teachers in this study initiate hybrid contexts to a low extent and seemingly ad hoc, in the moment. It is likely to believe that if students are to benefit from contextualization as a means for enhancing interest and learning, learning activities need to relate science content to other relevant contexts in a more comprehensive way. © 2021 University of Oslo, Norwegian Centre for Science Education. All rights reserved.
Finansierat av Marcus och Amalia Wallenbergs minnesstiftelse via projektet - The relation between trends on large-scale science studies and how teaching and learning are constituted in science classrooms